It is a common saying in certain parts of the immense edifice known as the Imperium of Man that an economy is forever in the pursuit of a means by which it could destroy itself. Capital flowed but grudgingly through the complexities of the Adeptus Terra – operating as it did in the boundaries of the Adeptus Mechanicus and their sole claim-right upon the deeper mysteries of technologies, the sovereignty of the Astartes Chapters, the innumerable charters of the Rogue Traders, and the chartist captains that were nominally to be granted (and thus, managed intelligently) by Imperial Governors but, invariably, were given to half inbred sons, daughters without sense, and eunuchs holding blackmail material. And yet, despite these many stifling pressures, capital still managed to be its own worst enemy, a fact currently being practiced upon you as you stood, sweltering and stultifying in the ridiculously hot noble palace upon Temptesous or Tempastus or Temparous or however the bloody planet's name was spelled.
The whole place, as far as you could tell, was one big boggy mireous mass of sweat, muck and malarial humors, best to be consigned to the Pit and forgot about. Instead, you had been stationed here for six standard months as the Victory, who had been a mite savaged during her latest run with the 'nids, was repaired and refitted in the orbital ring. Why the cog botherers had placed such a marvelous piece of void engineering around such a terrible place, you have no right guess. But they had done so due to the arcane whims of their God or your God or whoevers God they worshiped (you weren't rightly sure, all things considered, and the confessor you had met when you had converted at the age of sixteen had simply rapped your knuckles whenever you had deigned to ask), and perforce, Old Steelbones (your captain) placed his ship in the mid geos of the planet to have her seen to. Not that you could complain, precisely, considering what the 'nids had done to Steelbones, poor fellow. But you could complain, a little, a touch, at the temperature, and at the lack of windows in the Governor's palace, and at the lack of air conditioning, and at the press of people in their finest dress, each of them sweating and stupefying in the temperature, and at how terribly far away the four piece band was and how you could just barely hear the violone.
And, of course, your prize agent.
"All consigned to the warp, I'm afraid. An absolute shambles-" muffled by other conversation, drowned by the noise "-absolute shambles, might I bother you for the amesac?"
You attempted to step closer to your prize agent - a nasty, grasping, weaseling man that had dogged you through two centuries of objective time and thirteen years subjective – his life extended by juvinat treatment, relativistic cruise-holidays, and sheer determination to make your life an unending misery, a determination that had led him to affixing his wasted, graying body with augmetic implants, including two long eyestalks that allowed him to keep his focus upon you despite the crowds who had crammed themselves into the palace due to the Governor's insistence that more people invited to his soirees made them more popular and, thus, more grand. This meant that you were uncomfortable twice over - the temperature, yes, but also, your size was a terrible burden in this press. Doubly so when you had to work so hard to not trample the nobles.
Everyone here was so bloody
short.
It was not
your fault that you had been born two meters tall, honestly!
Still, you carried on with a dogged determination to try and hear the bad news: "I'm afraid I don't quite follow, old boy, you said a shambles? But I had placed my entire prize share for the battle near that Macgee place upon the stocks
you did suggest! You said metal markets were always booming, Gindon! That was the exact phrase: Metal Markets are always booming, Lieutenant Vynn!" A sudden mysterious eddy in the crowd of nobles allows you the chance to dart in and draw close to your prize agent, who has managed to spear several sweetmeats upon the ends of the scribe tines he nominally used for paperwork, and you are a mite worried that the ink injectors are even now filling his meats with black fluids that were best meant for parchments, not the vital organs. You are able, of course, to forgo worrying about this tiny detail by reminding yourself how much you cordially detest Gindon - and instead, smile beatifically at him as you clasp your muscular arm about his shoulders. "Metal. Markets. Always. Boom. That was the very thing you said, Gindon!"
"Oh, yes, of course," he says, his eye-stalks retracting with a clattering whirring clicking snap noise. "Well, I don't know what to tell you, Lieutenant but the, ah, bare, bald facts of the matter: You are seventeen million thrones in debt and accruing an interest on said debts at an unsustainable rate."
And now, you have realized why he demanded to tell you the news in a place that required you to turn over your weapons and had spent the first two hours of the party avoiding you. Ah. Yes. Quite a jape. What a fellow! Ha ha!
"I...ah, you are going to need to walk this through me, as if I were a lubber and you were a coxswain laying down the orbits of a ramship, you hear?" you ask. "Lay it simple, straight and true, so I might know why I should not
wring your mostly brass neck, you penny pinching-" Your voice had dropped to a snarling hiss as you let your native fury show fully upon your face. It had been nearly two and a half centuries of objective time since you had been plucked at the age of twelve from your homeworld of Aquios and thrust, first, into the life of the bodyguard of a Rogue Trader, and then into the equally exciting but far more profitable position of officer in his Majesty's Imperial navy, but to you, it had been less than twenty, and you still knew how to glare like a proper Death Worlder. It worked absolute wonders and your prize agent revealed the whole sorry mess.
"A Rogue Trader by the name of Gavintaus Snoot set the entire market plunging when he came home from wandering with an STC deign schema for a hypercheap alloy extractor and foundry system – like the ancestral miracle on Skullus. People sold shares, factories closed, near half a million guildmen were laid off and the baselines of Tullus and Sidrin hives rioted for lack of food. Only for then it to come out that Snoot's claim was false. Market still hasn't recovered! We have a roaring need for metals, but no hands to work it – most of the guildmen fled to the asteroids in system and to the out systems – I hear half ended up in the Chorus trifecta! It'll be ten years to sort this all out and I have no idea how any of us will make ends meet, and I am dreadfully sorry, but do, do, know, it was not my fault, normally, as the things go, as normal things go, as...under standard wartime conditions, such as have existed since his Majesty took up his throne, such as it is, that is, ah-" he quails yet more, and you release him, scowling.
"Snoot," you say, furious. "I should have known it was that bastard."
Several noblewomen glance your way. You smile at them, misreading entirely their censorious glare as something more flirtatious (you do, after all, fill out certain women's dream vision of a sapphic paramour, being two meters tall, covered in tattoos, and muscular enough to bend bronze with your bare hands), and then look back at Gindon, who has made his escape, not even bothering to ask how you might have known a Rogue Trader.
You suppose he was a wise fellow after all.
***
The quartet, by the time you had picked your way across the press without inciting any duels due to insult or injury, had gone from playing Chizori's
Violone Quartet in C-Major 98 to a sprightly, native tune that you believed was called
The Mire Farmer Finds His Wife In the Coop with His Neighbor and it was to this cheerful ditty that you find your good friend and dearest comrade, Doctor Jonathan Balthezar.
Jon, you had found upon a distant world stuck in that most undignified of positions: A noble chirgeon without a patient to treat and, worse, without any sign of prize money in his near future, due to the unfortunate lack of actually belonging to the most becoming of all the services, the Imperial Navy. Not that you had sand to throw in the face of the Arbites or the Astartes or those poor blood infantry, or those comely lasses of the Sororitas, or the Inquisition, or the Skitarri, or the Adepta Astra Telepathica, or any of the local Planetary Defense Forces or System Defense Fleets, or the local constabulary. It was simply that they all worked for pay - or no pay at all, in some cases, none at all! - and could not quite appreciate how very fine it is to take a nine century ship, bristling with guns, loaded with ores and fine metals and spices, and then bring it into port and, oh, yes, yes, the 0.05% share owed a Lieutenant made for quite a bit of lovely money, pouring betwixt your fingers. The very idea alone made you wish to dance along with the tune, it did.
And so, lacking any such noble future, you had pressed Jon into service over a quick round of amnesac and by enumerating on all the wonderful things about life in the navy... fine food...lovely prize money...excellent accommodations...thrilling battles...lovely prize money...the camaraderie of your loyal mates upon the mast...the mixed gendered crews...the lack of Comissairs save on the long gun ships and no one served upon long gun ships unless they were over two centuries old or terribly unfortunate...the lovely prize money...
It had not been until you had mentioned also, the delights of setting foot upon uncharted xenos worlds (after, being sure, to mention the prize money) that Jon had quite changed his tune and character. He had become quite delighted at the prospect and told you all about his interest in xenography and naturalism - and so, he had come aboard the Victory as your sole guest (being a Lieutenant, you were allowed but one guest) and you were delighted with the friendship ever since, even if he had never been properly
made a naval surgeon and the only reason he had saved three hundred and ninety eight lives over the course of your last cruise had been because the actual naval surgeon, a half blind woman named Bently, had stepped into an improperly sealed void-lock whilst drunk as a nine pin alleycat, and pressed the exfiltration button whilst the ship was cruising at nine gravities.
At the moment, Jon cared not a wit for you, for wild beasts, for untamed xenos, or for his books.
For Jon was a dear lover of all things musical - and so, he stood, transfixed before the quartet and gazed upon them with rapt attention, unaware of the effect this was having upon the poor musicians, their faces masks of growing consternation and (dare you say it) terror behind their white face paint and bright red lipstick and their curled powdered wigs and their frilled neck ruffs. For you see, Jon cut a figure both intimidating and affronting to the most casual of observer, being a tall, stork-like man whose features were of a daggerish cast - knife bladed jawbones, a wide forehead, a trimmed black hair cut, lips that when resting in the most natural and unassuming of expressions that Jon could use instead appeared to be fixed into a terrible scowl, a scowl that only grew more pronounced the more intent that he became on any subject. In fact, it was a most terrible irony, the more happy and excited that Jon grew about any particular subject, be it music or some new xenos beast, the more focused he did become upon it. The more did those bilious eyes flash, the more that lip did curl into yet more of a seeming scowl, and the more still he grew, until one became terribly certain that he was about to strike a blow upon ones head.
And so, the quartet played at increasing speed and increasing nervousness as Jon continued to enjoy their music - starting only when you clapped your hand upon his shoulder. "Vynn!" he exclaimed in his thick brogue. "My word! You look as if you have a case of the intestinal parasites - they did cook this food enough? I did examine a slice from one of those meats and I do believe I saw an actual worm egg in the fatty tissue, though, I lack my scopes and sniffers to make entirely sure..."
"Oh, no, no, no, not at all, I simply believe that we may need to prevail upon the voidsman shuttle to get us to the ship," you say, chuckling wryly. "I am all ahoo."
"Already?" Jon asked. "Vynn, have you ever considered that may-hap your habit of...ah...shall we say, encouraging genetic diversity in the nobility-"
"I'm not being hounded by a noble husband, Jon!" You laugh. "Besides, two women can't precisely be encouraging genetic diversity." You pause. "Can they?"
"Oh, there are certain possible interactions, most requiring the observation and interjection of the Tech Priests-"
You wave your hand, realizing you are getting off track. "No, Jon. I am out of money, entire. The funds, they are gone. Dead. Washed away."
Jon chewed upon his lower lip while the quartet chose his lack of attention as a chance to flee the scene, escape into the night, and vanish away, likely from the planet entire. "Well, that does put you in a spot of bother."
"
COMMANDER VYNN. ASTROPATHIC...MESSAGE...FOR YOU..."
You spring about yourself and find yourself looking upon your face, after twenty years in the debtors oubliette, but only then, do you recall, yes, a servo skull, of course. The obliging fellow bobs gently in the air, a scroll clasped in brassy tendrils and claws, and when you hold out your hand and take the letter, it is only then that you recognize that it had not called you Lieutenant Vynn. You unfold the scroll, purse your lips, and look upon the blurry mess of letterings and fine cursive before, grumbling beneath your breath, force yourself to take out your reading glasses and affix them to your nose, utterly ruining your rakish charms. Though, you admit, very little can truly ruin the effect of Naval blue upon your figure. By peering through your spectacles, you are able to, at last, read that most marvelous words from the admiralty.
TAKE HER AS PRIZE.
THE NEWLY MADE COMMANDER VYNN AND HER DEAR FRIEND JON ARE ABOUT TO HEAD TO ORBIT, TO INVESTIGATE THE VALIANT, THEIR SHIP. WHILEST PEERING THROUGH THE WINDOWS, JON ASKS...WHICH BOAT IS IT? IN IRRITATION, VYNN RESPONDS.
[] "Ship, my good chum! And it is the red one." (A Tempest Class heavy frigate - armed with awkward but extremely long ranged missile batteries and bedeviled by an archaic and entirely inadequite command system utilizing brass tubes and semaphores rather than vox communique.)
[] "Ship, my fine fellow! And it is the gold one." (A Falchion class torpedo frigate - recently heavily damaged and half crewed by the press, mutinous dogs the lot, furious at their lot and stubbornly hewing to recidivist ideals. But, they have torpedoes...)
[] "Ship, Doctor, ship! And it is the black one with the guady statue upon the prow, oh, yes, we shall have to have that removed! ...unless it be of a saint. Ah, I do hope that's not Sabbat, I do so love Sabbat, but ugh, what a design!" (A Sword class medium frigate - ancient, venerable, and long used to patrol and quiet duties, with a crew nearly as lubberly as a chartist captain's. Also, that awful statue is just...it's so ugly...)
